Fairy Tail 439

I haven’t blogged about manga in a long while now, maybe because I gave up on ranting about Naruto, and Fairy Tail was never really worthy of big criticism. Rather, it just annoyed me. After all, it never raised my hopes of it becoming anything more than just an above average piece of entertainment (now below average).

But I’m more than a little angry at this chapter. Sure, I got mad at how Zeref is the most useless bogeyman since bogeymen existed, and how Mashima-sensei is chopping down two main villains in Acnologia and Zeref into just one. I got mad at Zeref’s backstory appearing out of completely nowhere, with zero narrative prompt to bring about the flashback, and I hated the utterly pointless Avatar arc. I also got real pissed writing the Edolas arc given the number of plot holes I found and had to address. I didn’t rant about them here though.

I wouldn’t say that chapter 439 compares in the intensity of my anger over other chapters, but it’s the kind of thing that slowly drives you up the wall because it looks good on the surface, but stinks of stupidity when you delve deeper.

I want to like this, I really do. Creating a new continent and likely a new set of villains, connecting Lumen Histoire, Etherion and Face and trying to connect all the ridiculously disparate elements in Fairy Tail that made me question your writing skills…that’s all good. It shows that Mashima-sensei had a plan all along. But it’s a stupid, stupid plot.

So Fairy Tail is effectively the guardian of Lumen Histoire, with Etherion and Face the backup plans to defend it. Why on earth then was the Magic Council (who should know of Lumen Histoire since they created the backup plan in Face) all gung-ho about disbanding Fairy Tail earlier? Sure, the Council that had Ultear and Siegrain were okay with Fairy Tail to a certain extent, but Gran Doma was all for getting them disbanded. If that’s the case, wouldn’t that put Lumen Histoire under threat? Do Magic Councilmen not brief their successors on such things?

Then, once Tenrō happened, Lumen Histoire was left completely unguarded. For seven years. WTF? Are you kidding me? The excuse better be that Lumen Histoire’s location is better left unknown to all but Fairy Tail’s guild masters, so Albareth won’t be able to find out anything with their spies, assuming they have any. But they must have; surely Albareth wants eyes and ears in Ishgar to try and find Lumen Histoire and work out a time and place to attack again. If the Magic Council can spy on Albareth, why not vice versa? Anyway, it’s stupid. I already thought it was contrived that no one bought the old Fairy Tail building after foreclosure and during construction, accidentally found Lumen Histoire.

Then there’s Makarov’s decision. How the hell is he going to stall anyone by saying that Ishgar has Lumen Histoire? Wouldn’t that just prompt a swift assault? By going to Albareth on his own to do something like that, any country will get suspicious and immediately assume there’s something up. Since they got repelled once but never received retaliation, they must know that Ishgar won’t fight them willingly (also, if Makarov knows of their situation, then surely the reverse is likely). And if an emissary comes along to say weird things, wouldn’t they immediately talk to their spies and ask for info? A military-run kingdom isn’t going to wait a year to attack Ishgar and allow it to recover once they get word back that the Council is gone.

Disbanding Fairy Tail also doesn’t make sense. You want to protect your guild members from dying, sure. But sending them all away doesn’t solve the issue of Albareth attacking. Wouldn’t staying as a guild be less suspicious? A sudden disbandment will definitely raise some flags to whatever spies Albareth has. That the guild master then goes to Albareth to distract them, demonstrating knowledge of Lumen Histoire…yea, sure. In the end, you’re making it easier for Albareth to get to Lumen Histoire, which is bad for ALL Ishgar.

Finally, how is Face an adequate backup plan? And how is Etherion a good weapon against Albareth at all? Etherion is a single beam weapon from the skies that takes an hour to charge up, and only attacks a single location. I can’t imagine it having a great effect on an invading army which will be spread out in divisions. Okay, sure, it can ‘destroy a country in a second’. But I maintain that an invasion won’t be concentrated all in one area, and the way it’s portrayed in the manga makes it look far too narrow in blast radius to really destroy a country.

And Face, what’s the point of it when it takes away magic from everyone? Are you banking on Ishgar’s mages being better at hand to hand combat than Albareth? And that’s not even considering Albareth has greater numbers and organisation. Ishgar’s mages are scattered everywhere, with zero organisation within guilds, let alone as a combined army.

Oh, and I forgot one more thing. WHAT IS THE BLOODY POINT OF ZEREF? He’s supposedly the biggest, baddest villain in the series, but hasn’t done anything bad despite his threats to wipe out humanity. He’s just there, in the background, being completely pointless except as motivation for every dark guild. At this rate, he’s going to save everyone instead of kill them.

I don’t know if Mashima-sensei will deal with these problems I see. I highly doubt it’ll be satisfactory if he did